Spectators began assembling outside a Judiciary Committee hearing room more than an hour before the scheduled start time of Friday’s hearing to examine George W. Bush’s “imperial presidency.”

The hearing began about 15 minutes after its scheduled start time with an opening statement from Chairman John Conyers.

“We know the executive branch can and does overreach during times of war,” Conyers said. “As one who was included on President Nixon’s enemies list, I am all too familiar with the specter of an unchecked executive branch. And the risks to our citizens’ rights are even graver today, as the war on terror has no specific end point.” More than a dozen witnesses were expected to testify, including Rep. Dennis Kucinich, who has spearheaded a long-shot effort in the House to impeach Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, both of whom he accuses of lying to Congress in their pursuit of war in Iraq, among a host of other abuses.

“The decision before us is whether Congress will endorse with its silence the methods used to take us into the Iraq war,” Kucinich will say, according to his prepared testimony. “The decision before us is whether to demand accountability for one of the gravest injustices imaginable.”

Friday’s hearing came in response to Kucinich’s multiple introductions of resolutions calling for Bush’s impeachment, but Judiciary Chairman John Conyers has maintained that his committee has no intention of actually voting on the resolutions. Indeed, even Kucinich’s statement suggested he was barred from even uttering the word.

“The question for Congress is this: what responsibility do the President and members of his Administration have for that unnecessary, unprovoked and unjustified war?” he asks. “The rules of the House prevent me or any witness from utilizing familiar terms. But we can put two and two together in our minds. We can draw inferences about culpability.”

Between 100 and 200 spectators, many sporting T-shirts bearing anti-war slogans and dressed in activist group Code Pink’s trademark colors. A handful of Capitol Hill police kept watch over the protesters in the hall.

Kucinich entered the hearing room around 10 a.m. to rousing cheers and applause from the activists in the room and the dozens more who had to wait in the hallway because the hearing room was full. Many of those left out of the room occasionally chanted “Shame!” or “We want in!”

Edgar Mitchell, the sixth man to walk on the moon, appeared on a British radio show to say that he was “privileged enough to be in on the fact that we’ve been visited on this planet and the U.F.O. phenomena is real.”

Mitchell, a member of the Apollo 14 team, has long held these beliefs despite the fact that he himself has never seen neither an alien or a U.F.O. The Times’ story has an excellent collection of more information on Mitchell’s beliefs.

Mitchell’s resurgence in the media was prompted by a radio interview that he did yesterday with a British radio show. Audio of the show is available below.

Kucinich, Barr, Bugliosi among those testifying

The House Judiciary Committee has released a witness list for its hearing to examine “the imperial presidency” of George W. Bush.

Testifying Friday morning will be Rep. Dennis Kucinich, who has introduced several resolutions calling for President Bush’s and Vice President Dick Cheney’s impeachment; former Rep. Bob Barr, the Libertarian presidential candidate who led the charge to impeach Bill Clinton in 1998; Vincent Bugliosi, author of the just-released book The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder; and 10 other current and former members of Congress, constitutional experts and human rights activists.

“Americans have been waiting for Congress to hold the President accountable for his long list of misdeeds and misrepresentations. This hearing is a long overdue first step,” Kucinich said. “Congress enacted legislation authorizing the use of force against Iraq based on representations made by the White House. We now know that these representations were false and that the White House knew them to be false.”

The hearing, which was announced last week, seems to be the one Judiciary Chairman John Conyers promised to Kucinich after he introduced his second impeachment resolution aimed at Bush earlier this month. Any action on Kucinich’s articles of impeachment still seems unlikely, but the Ohio Democrat has previously said he just wants to be able to present his case.

Late Thursday afternoon, the committee released the full witness list, broken down into two panels.

The Honorable Elizabeth Holtzman, Former Representative from New YorkThe Honorable Bob Barr, Former Representative from Georgia, 2008 Libertarian Nominee for PresidentThe Honorable Ross C. “Rocky” Anderson, Founder and President, High Roads for Human RightsStephen Presser, Raoul Berger Professor of Legal History, Northwestern University School of LawBruce Fein<, Associate Deputy Attorney General, 1981-82, Chairman, American Freedom AgendaVincent Bugliosi, Author and former Los Angeles County ProsecutorJeremy A. Rabkin, Professor of Law, George Mason University School of LawElliott Adams, President of the Board, Veterans for PeaceFrederick A. O. Schwarz, Jr., Senior Counsel, Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law

Conyers (D-MI) previously laid out six areas the hearing would explore:

(1) improper politicization of the Justice Department and the U.S. Attorneys offices, including potential misuse of authority with regard to election and voting controversies;

(2) misuse of executive branch authority and the adoption and implementation of the so-called unitary executive theory, including in the areas of presidential signing statements and regulatory authority;

(3) misuse of investigatory and detention authority with regard to U.S. citizens and foreign nationals, including questions regarding the legality of the administration’s surveillance, detention, interrogation, and rendition programs;

(4) manipulation of intelligence and misuse of war powers, including possible misrepresentations to Congress related thereto;

(6) misuse of authority in denying Congress and the American people the ability to oversee and scrutinize conduct within the administration, including through the use of various asserted privileges and immunities.

Like this:

“When players walk into Army sponsored tournaments, the government knows more about them then they may suppose. The game records players’ data and statistics in a massive database called Andromeda, which records every move a player makes and links the information to their screen name. With this information tracking system, gameplay serves as a military aptitude tester, tracking overall kills, kills per hour, a player’s virtual career path, and other statistics. According to Colonel Wardynski, players who play for a long time and do extremely well may “just get an e-mail seeing if [they’d] like any additional information on the Army.”

This is significant because it directly relates to the “deep integration” of Canada, the United States, and Mexico into a North American Union under the auspices of the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP). The Independent Task Force on the Future of North America was a joint task force created between the US-based Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the Mexican Council on Foreign Relations and the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE). The purpose of this task force was to produce a document, which would serve as a blueprint for the implementation of “integrating” the three countries of North America into a regional block, ultimately into a North American Union. The report was issued 2 months after the leaders of the 3 nations signed the Security and Prosperity Partnership agreement in 2005, and is titled, “Building a North American Community.”

Thank you to the citizens of Berlin and to the people of Germany. Let me thank Chancellor Merkel and Foreign Minister Steinmeier for welcoming me earlier today. Thank you Mayor Wowereit, the Berlin Senate, the police, and most of all thank you for this welcome.

I come to Berlin as so many of my countrymen have come before. Tonight, I speak to you not as a candidate for President, but as a citizen – a proud citizen of the United States, and a fellow citizen of the world.

I know that I don’t look like the Americans who’ve previously spoken in this great city. The journey that led me here is improbable. My mother was born in the heartland of America, but my father grew up herding goats in Kenya. His father – my grandfather – was a cook, a domestic servant to the British. (more…)

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